Monday, October 31, 2011

Monday Morsel: Snapper David La Chapelle

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Today's first tidbit comes courtesy of the fine folks at Curbed who recently revealed saucy, surrealistic and some might say soo-blime photographer and artist David LaChapelle recently coughed up $1,739,500 for a spectacularly re-done if somewhat sedate new apartment in New York City townhouse built in 1854.

For many years Mister LaChapelle, a staple on the downtown NYC arts, culture and nightlife scenes for–dare we say–decades, lived in the East Village but apparently plans to move on over to the west side where he's acquired a one bedroom and one bathroom parlor floor apartment at the western end of Chelsea, once The Big Apple's gayest neighborhood, now home to the super-fab High Line, a number of excellent dining establishments and a thick crush of high-brow art galleries.

Listing information and marketing materials for the floor through residence show it encompasses a three generous but far from gigantic rooms placed front to back, each with marble fireplace. When the French and pocket doors the divide the rooms are all open the tow allow a view from the front of the apartment clear through the back and out the over-sized bay window that opens to a north-facing private terrace set into the tree tops.

The center room, in its current decorative configuration, does triple duty as the entry, dining room and office area. To the south, through elaborate French doors with side lights and fan-shaped transom, the lone bedroom offers a pair of south facing windows that look out onto the leafy street. The architect and/or decorator solved the closet problem–there is not according to the floor plan a single built-in closet in the entire apartment–with a matching pair of custom-designed and manly-looking wardrobes.

The main living area at the far back of the apartment has a flat screen tee-vee mounted over a chocolate marble mantel, a pair of built-in book-case, a deep bay window, and a sliver-wide kitchen with integrated appliances and white Shaker-style cabinetry topped by thick slabs of grey-veined white marble.

The dynamite old-school Italianate architectural details such as the elaborate plaster moldings–either preserved and restored or painstakingly re-created–and the finely-finished masculine-edged day-core belie the wired up reality of the one-bedroom residence equipped with a new-fangled Crestron home automation system that controls the lighting, integrated audio and visual systems, and electronically operated window treatments.

Your Mama has discussed Mister LaChapelle previously. In the early days of 2009 we prattled on about a 1924 Spanish style casa tucked snugly up into the hillside behind the Chateau Marmont Hotel owned by Mister LaChapelle and at that time listed with an asking price of $1,550,000. Property records show Mister LaChapelle sold the house for fifty grand over asking price in December of the same year to a noted L.A.-based art photographer.

Prior to that, back in the celebrity real estate Dark Ages of January 2007, Your Mama ooed and cooed over the 1,350 square foot two-bedroom East Village apartment Mister LaChapelle had listed at $1,995,000. The apartment was taken off and put back on the market a time or two and the asking price eventually fell to $1,695,000 when it evaporated from the open market in April 2009. The peeps at Property Shark show the famous photographer finally sold his East Village white elephant in June of this year (2011) to an corporate entity for $1,683,000.

Mister LaChapelle may be the most famous photographer to currently reside in the building but he isn't the only high profile photographer who has owed a piece of the townhouse pie. Property records show way back in 2005 Diego Uchitel, another high-profile picture snapper of famous folks, sold a similarly sized one bedroom and one bathroom floor through apartment for $1,295,000. Mister Uchitel's old apartment was until a couple weeks ago listed with a $1,400,000 price tag and some of the children may recall that over the summer Mister Uchitel and his fashion executive wife put their stylish upstate New York bolt hole on the market at $2,995,000. We're not sure what's happened to this listing and we haven't yet bothered to look. We'll amend when we get around to it.

10 comments:

Desert Donna
said...

It may just be me, but this seems like one niche properties that will move quick. Yes its small, but its charming and well turned out. Perfect bachelor pad or pied a terre. The outdoor space is just gravy.

@Newshen - That is a very, very traditional floor plan. It's hard to change the bathroom because this is essentially a condo, and you can't change the plumbing for the whole building. If you can, you can probably buy up anyway.

For Newshen who wants to open the bathroom from the toilet: this current configuration makes an attempt to be discreet and private. Sanitary? it's called wash your hands before leaving the bathroom (applies everywhere). And for acoustic privacy - I mean, would you want to be a guest at a party in the parlor and go use the bathroom while everyone can hear you fart & flush?

I've been in this apartment before. It is actually quite nice. There is something very grand, and old world about the proportions. The one thing that I found awkward, was that the bathroom is basically in the kitchen.